How do you like iTunes 11? [Poll]

So now that you've had a few days to dig into it, what do you think about iTunes 11? Is it the radical redesign you've been waiting for, or just a skin over the same old plumbing? Is the interface all cleaned up, or just confusing? Does iCloud integration make your life easier or simply more annoying?

Vote in the poll up top and let us know about any new features you really love, or hate, in the comments below!

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Reader comments

How do you like iTunes 11? [Poll]

Would love for there to be a poll in between small baby step and best iTunes ever. Although it does feel new and improved as well as faster their are some of the little things from the old iTunes that I miss.

Overall I like the new iTunes. My biggest issue is the new way to minimize to the small player only view and its lack of showing the current progress. I often used that mode for keeping track of the syncing process instead of completely minimizing to the dock or having the window open in the background.

I came here to say essentially the same thing as Vanti. iTunes 11 very much is "the best iTunes ever", yet with a qualifier: there's still a lot of room for improvement, as well as some oddities that I really hope get fixed. Namely, when navigating a TV show in expanded mode, the artwork/cover-art is not updated as you view different seasons.

There's also what must now be the infamous "what? podcast subscriptions are not synced???" Apple's ambiguous marketing copy fooled many of us into believing iTunes 11 would more than just sync podcast position. If sub sync works across iOS devices with the Podcast app, is it really too much to expect that iTunes be integrated into that process?

Oh, I almost forgot... redeeming iTunes gift cards with the camera? Awesome.

I really like most of the features but I regreted that Apple removed some abilities like cover flow but the new album view still okay for me. But I felt one feature where we can pause or ect while in small program preview in Windows - I hope Apple release another update to add option to enable it.

It is faster, I'll give it that. But the use of Smart Playlists is diminished. Playing a Smart Playlist used to work just like manual playlists, except that my listened-to songs would fall off until their "last played" date falls back into range. When I hit "randomize" it would re-order the displayed playlist. Now, when I hit "randomize", the song that currently plays jumps around the playlist. "Go To Current Song" does not always work.

What happened to Cover Flow?

Changing the playback volume from the Mini Player is now harder, it used to be RIGHT THERE on the player, now I have to click an unlabeled button first that pops open a menu, as opposed to another unlabeled button that opens another menu, and if I want to switch between them, just clicking on the other button does not work, it merely closes the current one, then I have to move the cursor off the player and back on to re-activate the hidden button.

Gone, too, is the "show all but show which type" of apps in the App list. v10 and older showed in one screen all of my apps separated by type (iPad only, iPhone/iTouch only, Universal) which makes it easier to see what apps I have when I want to find apps I no longer use and want to delete, or were comparing and want to get rid of the loser. And what is this "iPod Games" list, and why is mine empty when I have games in my collection, including ones for the smaller iPhone/iTouch screen?

EDIT: And searching for songs within the listing is now completely broken. Using the search box, it used to filter the view to show only matching items, which I consider ESSENTIAL when doing batch editing and you want to view only songs that match certain criteria. Now, it filters a "play next" window with no way of actually searching/filtering the list. Can I change my vote on this poll from "slight downgrade" to "train wreck?"

Once some of the things they've hidden from view have been found and turned back on, it's fine. Seems to crash less now. The only thing I miss is the way I could view my library of television episodes, with the cover-art and shows listed on the left and episodes for each of the shows on the right. That view is gone, now it's cover-art up top and you have to click on a show to see the episodes. Exact same with the 'Album' view, used to have it configured with cover-art on the left and tracks on the right, LOTS more clicking now to see your stuff.

My only gripe with it, is the same as 10.7: I have to reinstall iTunes each time I want to back up or sync my iDevices. I'm not sure why, and I've done all the available troubleshooting ideas (delete old backups, restart iMac and the iDevices, hard reboot iDevices, restored all iDevices to factory settings [which is never fun]), but I can only backup my iDevices on a fresh install of iTunes. Maybe someone here can give a suggestion...

after doing each of those things, it has just been easier to keep my download of iTunes 11 and just constantly reinstall it. It takes about 5-10 min. It's just annoying, really. AppleCare can only given me the caveman's "reboot. if no work, restore".

The loss of Dj is a killer for me. It is the main way I listen to music at work. I have been told a few times now that "Up Next" corrects that worry but so far it more of a pita than anything, I must not be using it as intended. Visually it is much more pleasing, I give it that.

The overall look is good and some of the new features are nice. Out of the box it was terrible, but after turning back on a few things I use such as the side bar and status bar, I'm not hating it as bad. It does load faster which is good.
Now the three things that are gone that really irk me:
Finding duplicates
Showing the cover when you choose a song (in song mode set as a list).
The ability to shuffle and save a playlist. It was very nice when you also use other 3rd party software that copies iTunes playlist such as Banshee in Linux and Google Play Music.

Now ever since i upgraded to Itunes 11 and updated my Apple Tv, my Apple TV will play music then it will all of a sudden stop and tell me to turn on Home Sharing which it's already on, then i have to reboot my Mac and then it will work. it's a pain in the butt. Hate it.

i only use list view. Once i got it back it was tolerable. But honestly there's nothing new that i'd ever use. Plus, i don't like that now i can't adjust the columns. I wish they'd left the cover art in the bottom corner so if it's missing i could easily add it. It was quicker for the first few days. now it's just as laggy on windows as before. Searching for stuff actually takes longer.

Bottom line it's pretty much no big deal. Apple isn't fixing what i find wrong or adding features i use. In fact it's removing a few. So for it's same shit different package.

Yes. List view was hard to find, difficult to control, and seems to be made for eight year-olds. Now I don't have anything against eight year-olds (except when they're discussing economics or voting) but can us adults just have our old, readily manupulable list of songs with features and view options that can be easily controlled?

It's one thing if you want to give people new options to streamline things, but why take away the old options and make things so childish. Honestly the entire population is being turned into blubbering children.

And don't feel bad, I see waaaaaaay too much software and training stuff out there that is just embarrassing. I guess the Apple devs have a lot of company at least, if not *good* company...

I have a really big music library and for me iTunes 11 is a train wreck into a bus full of nuns!
1. Search has been turned into "play next". Search doesn't seem to pull up whole albums or artists, just songs. And the search shows in a drop down like spotlight instead of pruning the playlist like before.
2. Display duplicates is total gone.
3. iTunes is MUCH slower with a large library.

iTunes 11 has clearly been optimized for casual users. They took away all the "power user" features that allow one to massage the metadata behind my songs.

I'll just have to wait for the Devs to figure out the terminal commands to turn features on again.

1) Song locator CTRL-L has lost much of its functionality. 2) When in MUSIC and you do a search a) very slow to get results as new window now pops up instead of just limiting your view to the search results right in your main window and b) the search is not saved.. so if you move your focus to a different playlist and then return to MUSIC, your search is gone.

Its horrible. A massive step backwards. Its so clunky and unpredicable. It lost all my songs so ive got to reinstall all the albums again. its slow. you have to change settings to get it to look like itunes 10. i cant turn off auto-sync. when i back up and restore half the apps go missing, notes vanish and contacts disappear.

"Am I the only one who hates the new itunes?" on the apple community forum has had over 73k views.